The most helpful favourable review

The most helpful critical review

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 starsGreat fun!
In my opinion all of the low rated reviews are from people that were expecting too much from the game. This is only natural considering it's 12 year development cycle. So I can see their point of view. But I think the reviews stating it's the worst game they have ever played are either being overdramatic, or haven't played much of what there is out there. It's graphics...

3.0 out of 5 starsJust OK
Its very generic with a bit of crude humour, funny in places but not really justifying its price tag. I would wait till the price comes down a bit before you purchase it. Some of the mini games are fun but the overall game is very lacking. The bosses are easy and the AI is very simple. If you think about a game about 12x better than COD Black Opps you are about there...

In my opinion all of the low rated reviews are from people that were expecting too much from the game. This is only natural considering it's 12 year development cycle. So I can see their point of view. But I think the reviews stating it's the worst game they have ever played are either being overdramatic, or haven't played much of what there is out there. It's graphics ARE dated compared to modern games, but it still looked great to me. I ran it on my laptop (with nVidia GT555M graphics) at 1080p resolution with everything on highest settings. The game was smooth us butter all the time.

Where it scores is the sheer variety of things to do. There's many different types of levels with different kinds of puzzles to solve. All of this interractivity is where much of the development time has been spent. Some people complained about the very linear nature of the game. For the most part you can't make any decisions about the route through the game. I actually liked this! It meant that it was always relatively clear what I have to do next, and I can just enjoy killing the baddies and progressing through the game. Even though it's linear I still found the game length to be satisfying. It was well worth the money in my opinion (I didn't pay original full price, due to holding off based on initial poor reviews, but I think it is worth full price).

Good Points;- Fun!- Different kinds of puzzles- Some brilliant funny comments from Duke- Plays smoothly even on my laptop (admitedly it has fairly fast graphics hardware)- Many different Bosses to beat- Good story length- Level design is clever and well thought out. Particularly the levels where Duke is shrunk to a tiny size- Sounds are good and emerse you in the game- Good variety of weapons, and you have to figure out which weapons are good for each enemy type

Bad Points:- Graphics are dated compared to modern games- Killing bosses is usually fairly repetative, and sometimes the difficulty isn't very balanced (some are too easy, some are too hard)- Some of Duke's "joke" comments are not funny- Some of the character animations look a little clunky- Only able to hold two weapons at a time

Its very generic with a bit of crude humour, funny in places but not really justifying its price tag. I would wait till the price comes down a bit before you purchase it. Some of the mini games are fun but the overall game is very lacking. The bosses are easy and the AI is very simple. If you think about a game about 12x better than COD Black Opps you are about there (By which I mean its allot better looking and you actually get to play rather than watch videos of the action in the single player) Compared to CODBO price this game is the bargain of the century.

This game does use Steam so if you dont like Steam i wouldnt bother you should wait for a game with nasty DRM instead which wont run. Steam does not require you to download the game it will install from the Disk if you use the disks installer not just enter the key in steam.

Graphics wise:

Despite what other reviews say its graphics are better than HL2 and BF2. It does use the poor old UT3 engine so isn't the most amazing graphics however. The movement engine is also pretty rubbish and you do get hung up quite a bit. Personally i suffered no issues at all with the game running. A couple of brief jumps in odd parts of the game but nothing major (AMD 955BE, 8GB DDR3, ATI 6870, Windows 7 64).

Conclusion?

Wait for it to enter a bargain bin and you wont be disappointed as full price is way more than its worth.

Games ok, creative levels, classic guns, graphics are different and pretty decent, funny and original at times. The only problem I have with this game is It's WAY TOO linear! what happened to good old open area duke nukem where you need keys to open up different sections of a large map?!?! Comapred to the old game This is like you're running down a tunnel from start to end...

I've been eagerly awaiting DNF since it was annouced in 1997 having loved the previous version. Given the hype and record time the game has been in development I couldn't wait to sit down and play this, and was really expecting to like it.

Unfortunately - there isn't much, if anything to like. DNF does not really seem to be a direct comparison to Duke 3d which was a first person action shooter; - DNF seems more puzzle orientated (the main one being how it got released) and has a much slower pace in most parts. After the intro which replays the final minutes of 3d, DNF starts very slowly indeed, and in fact its at least ten minutes before you even pick up a gun. You just end up wandering around a casino talking to people, followed by a search for energy cells to restart a reactor. The puzzles are reminiscent of Half Life, but vastly inferior, and the whole game feels very old fashioned (which is perhaps to be expected given how long it was in development). This is made worse by the fact that the game is so linear; - and you end up plodding through the levels one after the other. From time to time you will encounter a Boss - one section where you have to defeat a mothership is almost laughable for a modern game - you cannot even move off the spot and just have to fire at it repeatedly until it is destroyed. Also - you can only carry two guns.

By far the worst thing however is the loading time which you seem to spend more time waiting for than playing the game. I don't know how a game that has its origins in the late nineties could possibly load so slowly on a modern high spec PC. Levels can take minutes to load, and you are left staring at a static screen. The maps also seem quite small and the game frequently has to pause to load a new section. My PC is powerful enough to run the game at full detail settings across the board - so it is not a question of spec. The game also seems to crash occasionally as well, which again means you have to reload :( Perhaps this is why they called it Duke Nukem Forever?

I would advise all but the most diehard fans of Duke to give this a miss. Given the wait, you may be tempted to buy the game out of morbid curiosity just to see what it is like (surely it can't be that bad?) Trust me don't bother. For what I got I wasn't happy having spent £27 quid on the PC version. If I'd bought the Balls of Steel special edition version for £65 I'd feel like I had been robbed.

Prospective purchasers of DNF for the PC should look at downloading Eduke32 and the high resolution pack which is a free enhanced version of the original Duke Nukem 3d. This is a vastly superior game to DNF in every way, although you will need to copy the GRP files from an original Duke 3d CD in order to run the game.

Hopefully Gearbox Software, having finished off the original 3d Realms DNF, can now start on a new, worthy successor to Duke 3d.

Well i walzed into the shop, and wow! 'the dukes' back. Based on the original i didnt go half measures i forked out £50 on the limited edition for the PS3. Got home slapped it in, and waited..... What a load of rubbish. took that long before i had even got anywhere. instructions were few and far between. Seems they spent a hell of a lot of time makingit crude.. There was only so many times one can use loo and water and... you get the message gimmicks. if i wanted that sort of thing i'd have gone for..... wait for it!! leasure suit Larry...

Duke should be a 3rd person shoot em up, it didnt shoot me up much. It's a shame it had such a good run of predesessors. Value!!! if i had to pay postage i think i would ask for a refund. Potential was there, shame the developers weren't.

Wait for it to be given away on a magazine, that way you wont be disappointed.

Very poor. Initially I thought the critic reviews had been harsh - the early levels aren't that bad and the platforming elements aren't as tortuous as reviews I'd read made out. Graphically the game looks like the source engine from 2005 but there are levels that look pretty good. There comes a point after the cog puzzle where the action just seems to fizzle out. Very few enemies on screen, not much to do other that walk along corridors waiting for something to happen and that's it. The final boss fight is poor and overall the game just isn't fun.

Great fun, and being a fan of the original I really enjoyed it. Lot of moaning peeps expecting something different. Duke was a huge hit because it was 3D (not too many about then) and over the top irreverent action. This keeps the style. Good Stuff.

I find it interesting that most of the reviews on here are rants against Steam. It's a Steam game, it says so on the box, so why give a game one or two stars just because of the way it is distributed. Everyone who has ever played copied PC game can take the blame as much as Steam for that and Duke 3D was one of the easiest to copy back in the day.

Let's talk about the game shall we? It's a throw back. The graphics are poor, the animation is clunky even compared to a game like Half Life 2, which is itself pretty venerable! The music is best turned off or right down as it is repetitive and gets on your nerves after a few minutes. I've played the game for about five hours now so I think I can give a fair review.

First the faults, as I mentioned the graphics and animation are poor. AI for the baddies is almost non-existent. Aiming your gun is not as precise as it might be but that could be my mouse which I find OK for most FPS but it's not a gaming mouse? Also for a game with such crude graphics it's quite a spec hog. It needs a higher spec PC than HL2 yet delivers worse graphics. How did they manager that?

There are however some redeeming factors. It IS fun to play. Duke is resolutely non-PC. His quips as he/you dispatch another alien are laugh out loud funny on occasion. The gameplay is still there, you will find yourself fighting off hordes of pig-cops and other monsters and enjoying it. When Duke gets shunk to little Duke you get to drive around in an RC car which is good fun dodging the pig-cops trying to stomp you. You get to kick the eyeball of the cyclops monster for a field goal. Stupid but fun.

IF you loved DN3D back in the day you WILL get some play out of this game. It's not a great game but it is FUN and after all why else would you play any game?

I can't believe how much of a slamming this game is getting!Duke Nukem Forever is awesome!An old school shooter with some platform elements and driving mixed in makes this the most fun game i have played in a long time.With some serious firepower, big boss fights, plenty of LOL moments, loads of naked chicks and even the odd lap dance, What more could any man want?Do yourself a favour and buy this today!